Episode38
A Ragtag, Fugitive Fleet Spreads Seeds Across the Galaxy We left off with the tree fleet ("The Orchard"?) huddled together in the shadow of the cataclysmic planetary-ignition aftermath. Most of the Spetznatz fleet had been destroyed along with the Smoke Ring but one FFTL ship remained along with the main bulk of their fleet enroute from the system gate. The lone FFTL ship posed a problem for us since it could catch up to anything we launched. We had hatched a plan to ambush it during one of its 'jumps' but after the cataclysm it stopped which wrecked that plan. Shortly after, it turned around and started back to the fleet thus further foiling our ability to reach it. While it was close our sensors were able to see that it had a large clear sphere on forward section with a unique-looking alien inside it casting some kind of unrecognizable magic. Joe's Spacer Lore revealed that these aliens were very rare and had the ability to 'fold space'. If we got the name of the alien race, this logger cannot recall it. The Spetznatz must have lost a half-dozen or so of these aliens in the cataclysm. Ouch! Oz issued a 'reaver warning' scare-message to the Spetznatz despite protestations from Pete who seemed strangely interested in what was being said to the merchants he'd previously treated with such animosity. The hope was that it would keep them from investigating the new proto-planet too closely as well as stop following our fleet. We might have been partially successful in this but most of the fleet continued to the Smoke Ring which seems a bit suspicious in hindsight. Why weren't they scared of the Reavers? Perhaps the lords who hired them expected it? As someone said, the timing of the fleets arrival was highly coincidental. The Prophecy Guard contacted us while Oz was on the transceiver to let us know they'd captured the system gate back from the Spetznatz. Their callous reference to 'slaughter' was a little troubling and raised some questions about what they'd been doing 'behind the scenes' in our wake. Having control of the gate allowed us to sever Spetznatz communications as an added bonus. We considered making a run for this gate but decided against it when we calculated that part of the Spetnatz fleet would make it back before we did. We told the Guard to meet us at the other gate instead. Of particular interest to Oz were the remains of the planet which appeared to have collapsed into some kind of exotic proto-planet. Further observation revealed that it was cooling unusually fast and that a 'purple glow' was emanating from the, still-exposed, core. It took a bit of lobbying but the party agreed to pay it a visit where we were able to collect some 'ReaverMetal'. Through all of this the Spetznatz did not appear to show much interest which is probably a good thing. We left the ReaverMetal proto-planet spinning out of the system in the trajectory of a rogue planet. It's likely we have not heard the last of it. After much deliberation, we moved the fleet toward the 'far' system gate and sped to catch up with it in the Tenacious Hound. This approach meant spending more time in-system but allowed us to outrun the Spetznatz fleet. Their FFTL ship followed us for a while but gave up before we reached the gate. The fleet was away! Thus began an epic journey across the galaxy. At the Queen's urging 'seed parties' were dispatched to suitable locations along the way. Twenty Five tree groups of three found new homes and now form the backbone of a Tree Gate network that should allow us to move around the galaxy much faster than ever before. The journey took two months and lots happened. Most of which can be tracked in individual character threads. One item of interest that came up was on the topic of Nicademus and his essays on the nature of soul energy. Joe did a bit of investigation and revealed that Nicademus was actually his alternate-dimension self, NoJ. He managed to gain his trust a bit (apparently the rest of us are assholes in the other dimension) so he shared that the entire multi-verse was in danger of collapsing due to some kind of major soul imbalance. The only way to rectify it was to destroy the Star of the Progenitors and release all the souls stored inside it which would counter-balance agains the Reaver's efforts somehow. It's easy to see how NoJ would have been at odds with the rest of the party in the other dimension since the SotP is also a means to 'win' the Reaver war. Destroying it would be challenging since it might effectively mean losing against the Reavers but saving the multiverse. That's a tough call to make for those of us not planning on taking Reaver as a third stream. 50 generic and 100 blocks (no checks) for the journey. We also had 4 blocks in-system before the journey began. 22 Genaric 11 academic for the logger . Back to Space Junk Log Category:Space Junk